2nd week of August 2010

Eating Carrots If you are a regular garden journal reader, you may have noticed that I am several weeks behind. With my father-in-law's declining health and passing in the middle of harvest season, a few things have gone undone. We are thankful for his long, full life and the encouragement from friends and relatives. I also learned that veggies and laundry don't take a break for funerals and I was glad to share plenty of tomatoes and other farm fare during our many family meals. The return of a normal schedule though means plenty of catch-up activities. With the help of some visiting uncles, my beet bed is looking well groomed again and they also tackled a bed of severely overgrown weeds. My fall carrots however appear to be a lost cause with foot high pigweed shading the poor seedlings. Fortunately, we are harvesting a few carrots from a summer planting that the boys especially enjoy direct from the garden.

Pepper Bowl The colorful veggies of summer continue to produce well. I love setting out the many different heirloom tomatoes for veggie customers. The pepper harvest is starting to become colorful also. I always feel like it is a long wait till the green peppers turn to hues of yellow, orange and red but they are oh so sweet and lovely when they finally do. The Tom Thumb little sweet peppers are also turning colors and I love to stuff them with herb cheese for appetizers. Peppers are such an easy crop to preserve for winter and we chop them to put in Ziploc freezer bags for pizza, stir fry and more. The hot chilis simply are left in a basket to dry naturally.

Award Winning Photo One of the garden journal photos our 11 year old daughter took this spring won several awards recently. The crocus and bee photo took first place in the elementary division in the Wayne Center for the Arts contest. They entered it in the Ohio State fair where she received third place in the state. I am encouraging her to continue taking photos around the farm to use for making note cards. By selling those she can start earning money towards her own camera. Meanwhile, I continue to press flowers for my winter note card making. Every week I am adding 10-15 newspaper pages of flowers, herbs, leaves and even weeds for gluing on handmade paper cards. The lavendar and orange nasturtiums are my favorites but I also like the sage, Queen Anne's lace, purple basil, sunflower petals, salvia, thyme,...